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WHEN John Muir left the
University of Wisconsin in June, 1863, he had fully resolved to begin the
study of medicine at Ann Arbor. There are a number of warmly worded letters
of introduction from Madison friends who wished to smooth his way at the
University of Michigan. "You will find in him the greatest modesty joined
with high moral and religious excellence," wrote one of them to James R.
Boise, then Professor of Greek in the latter institution. How far these
plans for the definite choice of a profession had progressed is apparent
also in the fact that friends addressed letters to him at the Medical School
and evinced surprise when they were returned unclaimed. "A draft was being
made," he wrote in explanation to one of them, "just when I should have been
starting for Ann Arbor, which kept me at home."
Meanwhile his fellow student,
James L. High, later a distinguished lawyer in Chicago, wound up his affairs
at Madison and made a report in November. "Our class," he wrote, "numbers
only five, viz., Wallace, Spooner, Salisbury, Congar, and myself. Leahey has
gone into the army, and Lewis is a senior at Union College, New York. So, as
you see, we are small in numbers, but we are making a brave fight of it
nevertheless. The Societies are doing unusually well this term. Yours
numbers about twenty-five members, and ours over forty." Then follows an
account of his efforts to collect small loans which Muir had made to fellow
students. The society referred to as "yours" was the Athenea Literary and
Debating Society of which he was one of the founders.
Returning from his botanical rambles in July,
John spent the autumn and winter on the old Fountain Lake farm which, some
time in 1856, had passed into the hands of his brother- in-law, David
Galloway. "With study and labor I have scarcely been at all sensible of the
flight of time since I reached home," he writes at the end of February to
his friend Emily Pelton. "In my walks to and from my field work and in
occasional rambles I, of course, searched every inch of ground for botanical
specimens which, preserved in water, were analyzed at night. My task was
seldom completed before twelve or one o'clock. I was just thinking to-day
that soon the little anemones would be peering above ground."
But even at this time, when the new sap was
barely beginning to swell the buds, the young naturalist was pluming his
wings for a long flight. "I have enjoyed the company of my dear relatives
very much during this long visit," he adds, "but I shall soon leave them
all, and I scarcely think it probable that I shall be blest with so much of
home again." As for the study of medicine, he merely remarks that he had "by
no means given up all hope of still finding an opportunity to pursue this
favorite study some other time." But that time never came. Two days later,
on March 1, 1864, he announces, in a parting note to the same friend, "I am
to take the cars in about half an hour. I really do not know where I shall
halt. I feel like Milton's Adam and Eve -'The world was all before them
where to choose their place of rest.'"
It would be impossible now to trace any part of
the intricate route which finally led him to Meaford, County Grey, Canada
West, were, it not for one of those fortunate incidents which sometimes
occur to gladden the heart of a biographer. In editing Muir's journal and
notes written during his "Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf" the writer began
to realize how much easier it would be, at critical points, to follow his
wanderings if one had his herbarium specimens with the identification slips,
giving date and place of collection. But no part of the herbarium gathered
during the sixties seemed to have survived the wanderings of this modern
Ulysses. In looking
over some correspondence with Mrs. Julia Merrill Moores, one of his early
Indianapolis friends, the writer found reason to suppose that Muir had left
for safekeeping at her house some of his belongings when he went South in
1867. Though she had passed on long ago the clue seemed worth following, and
a search in Indianapolis proved successful beyond all expectations. For the
attic of her son, Charles W. Moores, yielded up large parts of the long
forgotten herbarium which Muir had gathered during the years from 1864 to
1867. Since no letters
or notebooks of Muir from the period between March and October, 1864, have
been found, the little identification slips, though not precise in giving
geographical localities, furnish important clues to his movements. In April
he was already wading about in Canadian swamps, and by the month of May he
had penetrated northward as far as Simcoe County. On the 18th of that month
he started on a three weeks' ramble through Simcoe and Grey Counties,
walking an estimated distance of about three hundred miles through the
townships of Guillimbury, Tecumseh, Adjala, Mono, Amaranth, Luther, Arthur,
Egremont, Proton, Gleneig, Bentinck, Sullivan, Holland, and Sydenham. "Much
of Adjala and Mono," he notes, "is very uneven and somewhat sandy; many
fields here are composed of abrupt gravel hillocks; inhabitants are nearly
all Irish. Amaranth, Luther, and Arthur abound in extensive Tamarac and
Cedar swamps, dotted with beaver meadows. I spent seven and a half hours in
one of these solitudes extraordinary. Land and water, life and death, beauty
and deformity, seemed here to have disputed empire and all shared equally at
last. I shall not soon forget the chaos of fallen trees in all stages of
decay and the tangled branches of the white cedars through which I had to
force my way; nor the feeling with which I observed the sun wheeling to the
West while yet above, beneath, and around all was silence and the seemingly
endless harvest of swamp. Above all I will not soon forget the kindness
shown me by an Irish lady on my emerging from this shadow of death near her
dwelling." Of memoranda
made on this ramble there survives only the following additional note:
It was with no little difficulty that my object
in seeking "these wilds traversed by few" was explained to the sturdy and
hospitable lairds of these remote districts. "Botany" was a term they had
not heard before in use. What did it mean? If told that I was collecting
plants, they would desire to know whether it was cabbage plants that I
sought, and if so, how could I find cabbage plants in the bush? Others took
me for a government official of some kind, or minister, or peddler.
One day an interesting human discovery is made
and recorded thus: "Found Dunbar people, much to my surprise, far in the
dark maple woods; spent a pleasant day with them in rehearsing Dunbar
matters." During July
he was botanizing north of Toronto in the Holland River swamps, and on
highlands near Hamilton and Burlington bays. In August he is again about the
shores of Lake Ontario and in the vicinity of Niagara Falls. A "wolf
forest," mentioned on several slips, is doubtless the place on the southern
shore of Lake Ontario where one night he had an adventure with wolves. That
as well as other incidents form the subject of the following fragmentary
autobiographical sketch which fortunately covers this period of Canadian
wanderings in some detail:
After earning a few dollars working on my
brother-in-law's farm near Portage, I set off on the first of my long lonely
excursions, botanizing in glorious freedom around the Great Lakes and
wandering through innumerable tamarac and arbor-vite swamps, and forests of
maple, basswood, ash, elm, balsam, fir, pine, spruce, hemlock, rejoicing in
their boundless wealth and strength and beauty, climbing the trees, reveling
in their flowers and fruit like bees in beds of goldenrods, glorying in the
fresh cool beauty and charm of the bog and meadow heathworts, grasses,
carices, ferns, mosses, liverworts displayed in boundless profusion.
The rarest and most beautiful of the flowering
plants I discovered on this first grand excursion was Calypso borealis (the
Hider of the North). I had been fording streams more and more difficult to
cross and wading bogs and swamps that seemed more and more extensive and
more difficult to force one's way through. Entering one of these great
tamarac and arbor-vita swamps one morning, holding a general though very
crooked course by compass, struggling through tangled drooping branches and
over and under broad heaps of fallen trees, I began to fear that I would not
be able to reach dry ground before dark, and therefore would have to pass
the night in the swamp and began, faint and hungry, to plan a nest of
branches on one of the largest trees or windfalls like a monkey's nest, or
eagle's, or Indian's in the flooded forests of the Orinoco described by
Humboldt. But when the
sun was getting low and everything seemed most bewildering and discouraging
I found beautiful Calypso on the mossy bank of a stream, growing not in the
ground but on a bed of yellow mosses in which its small white bulb had found
a soft nest and from which its one leaf and one flower sprung. The flower
was white and made the impression of the utmost simple purity like a
snowilower. No other bloom was near it, for the bog a short distance below
the surface was still frozen, and the water was ice cold. It seemed the most
spiritual of all the flower people I had ever met. I sat down beside it and
fairly cried for joy.
It seems wonderful that so frail and lowly a plant has such power over human
hearts. This Calypso meeting happened some forty-five years ago, and it was
more memorable and impressive than any of my meetings with human beings
excepting, perhaps, Emerson and one or two others. When I was leaving the
University, Professor J. D. Butler said, "John, I would like to know what
becomes of you, and I wish you would write me, say once a year, so I may
keep you in sight." I wrote to the Professor, telling him about this meeting
with Calypso, and he sent the letter to an Eastern newspaper [Boston
Recorder.] with some comments of his own. These, as far as I know, were the
first of my words that appeared in print.
How long I sat beside Calypso I don't know.
Hunger and weariness vanished, and only after the sun was low in the west I
plashed on through the swamp, strong and exhilarated as if never more to
feel any mortal care. At length I saw maple woods on a hill and found a log
house. I was gladly received. "Where ha ye come Ira? The swamp, that awfu'
swamp. What were ye doin' there?" etc. "Mony a puir body has been lost in
that muckle, cauld, dreary bog and never been found." When I told her I had
entered it in search of plants and had been in it all day, she wondered how
plants could draw me to these awful places, and said, "It's God's mercy ye
ever got out."
Oftentimes I had to sleep without blankets, and sometimes without supper,
but usually I had no great difficulty in finding a loaf of bread here and
there at the houses of the farmer settlers in the widely scattered
clearings. With one of these large backwoods loaves I was able to wander
many a long wild fertile mile in the forests and bogs, free as the winds,
gathering plants, and glorying in God's abounding inexhaustible spiritual
beauty bread. Storms, thunderclouds, winds in the woods - were welcomed as
friends. Only once in
these long Canada wanderings was the deep peace of the wilderness savagely
broken. It happened in the maple woods about midnight when I was cold and my
fire was low. I was awakened by the awfully dismal wolf-howling and got up
in haste to replenish the fire. Some of the wolves around me seemed very
near, judging by their long-drawn-out howling, while others were replying
farther and farther away; but the nearest of all was much nearer than I was
aware of, for when I had succeeded in producing a blaze that lighted up the
bushes around me, and was in the act of stooping to pick up a branch to add
to the blaze, a large gray wolf that had been standing within less than ten
feet of me rushed past so startlingly near that I threw the limb at the
wolf. This put an end to sleep for that night. I watched and listened and
kept up a good far-reaching blaze, which perhaps helped to keep them at bay.
Anyhow I saw no more of them, although they continued their howling
conversation until near daylight.
I had to stop again and again in all sorts of
places when money gave out, accepting work of any kind and at any price, and
with a few hard-earned dollars, earned at chopping, clearing, grading,
harvesting, going on and on again, thus coming in contact with the people
and learning something of their lives.
Among the farmers in the region between Toronto
and the Georgian Bay I found not a single American. They were Scotch,
English, and Irish, mostly Scotch. Many of them were Highlanders who had
been driven from their little farms and garden patches in the glens by the
Duke of Sutherland when he cleared his estates of these brave home- loving
men to make room for sheep. Most of the old folks, by the time of my visit,
had gone to rest in their graves, and the farms they had so laboriously
cleared were in the possession of their children, who were living in good
brick houses in comparative affluence and ease.
At one of those Highland Scotch farms I stopped
for more than a month, working and botanizing. The family consisted of the
mother, her daughter, and two sons. Here I had a fine interesting time. Mrs.
Campbell could hardly have been kinder had I been her own son, and her two
big boys, [In a marginal note Muir gives their names as "Alexander and
William," with a question sign. In the letter of a correspondent, marked "W.
E. Sibley of early Canada botanical days," occurs the following sentence: "I
saw D. and A. Campbell and was at their house. They were all quite well and
said they intended writing to you." (February 28, 1865.)] twenty and
twenty-five years of age, were also very kind and fonder of practical jokes
than almost anybody I ever met. In the long summer days I used to get up
about daylight and take a walk among the interesting plants of a broad marsh
through which the Holland River flows. I had not been feeling very well and
motherly Mrs. Campbell was somewhat anxious about my health. One morning the
boys, finding my bed empty and knowing that I must have gone botanizing in
the Holland River swamp, and knowing also the anxiety of their mother about
my health, put a large bag of carpet rags, that was kept in the garret, in
my bed and pulled the blankets over it. When Mrs. Campbell met the boys
before breakfast and inquired for John, they with solemn looks replied that
"Botany," as they called me, was sick. When she anxiously inquired what
ailed me they said they didn't know because they could not get me to speak;
they had tried again and again to arouse me but I just lay still without
saying a word as if I were dead, though I seemed to be breathing naturally
enough. Mrs. Campbell, greatly alarmed, first called me from the foot of the
stairs, and, getting no reply, walked half way up and again called, "John,
John, will you not speak to me?" The continued dead silence corresponded
with the boys' cunning story and made her doubly anxious, so she climbed to
the bed and shook as she supposed my shoulder, saying, "John, John, will you
not speak?" Finally, pulling down the cover, she cried in glad relief, "Oh,
those boys again, those boys again!"
Soldiers from the British army occasionally
deserted and hid in the woods and swamps. For a certain deserter a
considerable reward was offered and the Campbell boys told the officers that
they had seen a suspicious character creeping out of the woods and swamps of
the Holland River early in the morning, and that they thought he must be
getting food from the neighbors and hiding in the swamp. A watch was,
therefore, set and when they captured me I had some difficulty in explaining
that I was only a botanist.
Here is another of the practical jokes of these
irrepressible Highlanders: on frosty moonlight nights in winter when the
sleighing was good, many of the young men from the neighboring village of
Bradford took their girls out sleigh-riding. The Campbell boys dressed
themselves in white bed sheets and, just before the sleigh-riding began at
dusk, they climbed to the roof of a schoolhouse which stood at the
crossroads, a mile or so from their farm, and commenced vigorously trying to
saw off the chimney with a fence rail. Their reward was in hearing the boys
and girls scream and rush back to the village. The people in that
neighborhood were devoted believers in good old-fashioned ghosts.
These boys were capital story-tellers. One of
their neighbors had a nose thus described by the elder of the two, "Mr.
So-and-so has a big nose. Oh! a very big nose! So big and heavy that it
shakes when he walks; and his shaking nose shakes his whole body, and makes
the ground shake, and you would think there was an earthquake!"
Farther west were large wooded areas, still
perfectly wild, on the edges of which homeseekers were laboriously plying
their heavy axes, making clearings for fields. At first only a few acres
would be slashed down - oak, ash, elm, basswood, maple, etc., of several
species. On account of the closeness of the growth these trees were tall and
cornparatively slender, and the roots formed a net-work that covered the
ground so closely that not a single spot was to be found in which a
post-hole could be dug without striking roots. These beautiful trees were
simply slashed down, falling upon each other and covering the ground many
trees deep, cut usually in winter and left to dry.
As soon as the branches were dry enough to burn
well, fire was set and they were consumed, leaving only the blackened boles
and heavier branches. These were then chopped into manageable lengths of
from ten or twelve to fifteen feet, and the neighbors were called to a
logging bee. Plenty of whiskey was said to make the work light. The heavier
logs were drawn by oxen alongside of each other; the next heavier drawn
alongside were rolled up on top of the large ones by means of hand-spikes,
the next on top of the second tier, and so on, and the smaller tops and
heavy branches were peaked on top of all. A fire was then started on top of
these piles which ate its way downward. Soon all the clearing was covered
with heavy, deep, glowing fires and the thickest logs after smouldering for
days were at last consumed. Next the ashes were leached, boiled down and
roasted for potash, which found a market in Europe, and yielded the first
salable crop of the farm.
Next, pains were taken to scrape little hollows
between the roots where a few potatoes could be planted, without any
reference to placing them in rows. Occasionally separate little pits were
made among the roots for a few grains of wheat, which was cut with a sickle
and thrashed with flails. Perhaps a sack of grain, for the family bread,
could thus be raised from an acre or so.
Gradually the roots nearest the surface decayed
and were laboriously chopped and grubbed out, wheat sown and covered with
very small strong V-shaped harrows, which bounced about among the stumps.
Still later larger roots and some of the smallest stumps were grubbed out of
the way, and at last the big stumps were laboriously dug out or pulled out
with machines worked by oxen. These first small clearings were enlarged from
year to year, but a whole lifetime was usually consumed before anything like
an ordinary size farm was brought under perfect cultivation and fitted for
the use of reaping and sowing machines.
Besides the difficulty of clearing away these
dense woods, the first small farms, opening the ground to the light, were
subject to late and early frosts, on account of the ground being so covered
with humus and leaves that it could absorb but little heat. While surrounded
with a dense forest wall the winds could not reach them with heat brought
from afar, and the day temperature fell rapidly.
One morning when I was on my way through the
woods I came to a little clearing where there was a crop of wheat beginning
to head. Frost had fallen on it the night before, and a poor woman was
walking along the side of the field weeping, wiping her eyes on her apron,
and crying, "Oh! the frost, the frost, the weary frost. We'll hae na crop
this year and we had nane the last. We'll come to poverty. We'll come to
poverty." After a great part of the forest was cleared, the stumps removed,
the humus plowed under, and the soil opened to the sunshine and equalizing
winds these frosts disappeared.
In the spring, when the maple sap began to flow,
all the young people had merry, merry times, shared by their elders who
remembered their own young days. The sap was boiled in the woods, and when
sugaring off at a certain stage it made wax which was cooled in the snow. A
big fire was made and the evening spent around it eating maple "wax," and,
later on in the "sugaring off," the sugar also. Other amusements were
meeting for song singing and general merry-making, but dancing was seldom
indulged in, being frowned on by their pious elders.
Most of the settlers were pious and faithfully
attended church. All were exceedingly economical on account of the
necessity, long continued, of saving while making a living in the
wilderness. There was good reason for the scarcity of Americans in that
community because of the far greater ease with which a living could be made
on the prairies and oak openings of the Middle and Western States.
When I came to the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron,
whose waters are so transparent and beautiful, and the forests about its
shores with their ferny, mossy dells and deposits of boulder clay, it seemed
to be a most favorable place for study, and as I was also at this time out
of money again I was eager to stay a considerable time. In a beautiful dell,
only a mile or two from the magnificent bay, I fortunately found work in a
factory where there was a sawmill and lathes for turning out rake, broom,
and fork handles, etc.
During the winter months of his sojourn in this dell near Meaford he had the
companionship of his youngest brother, Daniel, who also was seeking
employment in Canada at this time. A wee letter, one by two inches in size,
dated Meaford, October 23, 1864, and addressed in playful mood to his sister
Mary, gives an account of the people in this "Hollow" where they found
employment. "Our family," he writes, "consists, first of all, of me, a most
good man and big boy. Second, Daniel, who is also mostly big and three or
four trifles funny. Third, Mr. William Trout, an unmarried boy of thirty
summers, who, according to the multiplicity of common prognostications, is
going to elect a lady mistress of Trout's Hollow some day. Fourth, Charles
Jay, a bird of twenty-five, who is said to coo to a Trout. . . . This Jay
and last mentioned Trout are in partnership and are the rulers of the two
Scotch heather Muirs." He also mentions Mary and Harriet, two very capable
sisters of William Trout, one of them the housekeeper and the other a
school-teacher. "We all live happily together," continues the letter.
"Occasionally an extra Trout comes upstream or a brother Jay alights at our
door, but they are not of our family." The fears of his sister, lest they
work too hard, are met by the declaration that they are working neither hard
nor long hours; that they "are growing fatter and fatter, and perhaps will
soon be as big as Gog and Magog."
Mr. Trout, who was still living in 1916, at my
request furnished me with an account of the coming of the Muirs to Meaford.
It seems that John and Daniel occasionally traveled independently in their
search for work, meeting by arrangement at stated times and places, or, if
they had lost connection, found each other again by means of letters from
home. One midsummer day in 1864 Daniel appeared in search of work at the
Trout sawmill. He remained there six weeks until his brother John had been
located through home communications.. The two then resumed their botanical
journeyings until the approach of winter.
Scenting a possible chance to exercise his
inventive genius, John was persuaded that the Hollow might be a good place
in which to pass the long Canadian winter. One evening in autumn, 1864, they
both arrived at the mill, outlined their plans, and were engaged to assist
in building an addition to the rake factory. John's mechanical ability soon
proved so advantageous for his employers that they entered into a contract
with him to make one thousand dozen rakes and thirty thousand broom handles.
When John Muir made his rake and broom handle
contract with us [wrote Mr. Trout], he also made a proposition to be given
the liberty of improving the machinery as he might determine, and that he
should receive therefore half the economical results of such improvement
during a given period. An arrangement of this kind was entered into, and he
began with our self-feeding lathe which I considered a nearly perfect
instrument for turning rake, fork, and broom handles and similar articles.
By rendering this lathe more completely automatic he nearly doubled the
output of broom handles. He placed one handle in position while the other
was being turned. It required great activity for him to put away the turned
handle and place the new one in position during the turning process. When he
could do this eight broom handles were turned in a minute. Corresponding to
this lathe I had on the floor immediately above him a machine that would
automatically saw from the round log, after it was fully slabbed, eight
handles per minute. But setting in the log and the slabbing process occupied
about three eighths of the time. This, with keeping saws and place in order,
cut the daily output to about twenty-five hundred. John had his difficulties
in similar ways and at best could not get ahead of the sawing. It was a
delight to see those machines at work. He devised and started the
construction of several new automatic machines, to make the different parts
of the hand rakes, having previously submitted and discussed them with me.
Daniel returned to Wisconsin after a time, but
John continued at Meaford for about a year and a half. During the spring and
summer he pursued his favorite study of botany with increasing enthusiasm
and industry. Sundays and the long summer evenings were invariably devoted
to the plants and the rocks. The lack of a comprehensive manual of the
Canadian flora was, of course, a serious disadvantage and many herbarium
sheets bear testimony to difficulties he encountered. They also testify to
expeditions, made in 1865, of which no other record remains, for here, among
numerous specimens from the "garden of J. Lufthorn" and the forests of Owen
Sound and Georgian Bay, are trophies from the "Devil's Half Acre, forty
miles northeast from Hamilton" and from the vicinity of Niagara Falls.
In Canada, as at the University of Wisconsin,
Muir was his own severest taskmaster. His bed, mounted on a cross axle and
connected with an alarm clock, was so contrived that it set him on his feet
at five o'clock. If he happened to lie in it diagonally he sometimes was
thrown out sharply on the floor. "The fall of John's bed," according to Mr.
Trout, "was a wake-up signal for every one in the house. If we heard a
double shock, caused by a roll-out, we had the signal for a good laugh on
John, of which he had further jolly reminders at the breakfast table." His
conversational powers already made him a marked member of any company, and
he was never loath to engage in a friendly argument at meal time. But a book
was always kept within reach for snatches of reading, and his studious
habits kept him at work till far into the night.
His young sisters at this time had in him an
interesting correspondent. Apparently they did not give him sufficiently
detailed information about home affairs to satisfy his curiosity, for he
complains to one of them that, 'While her letter gave pleasure, "it was not
great enough in any of its dimensions, minute enough in its details, or
sufficiently knick-knacky in its morals." "Here," he writes, "is a form for
a small letter from your locality, though as regards style I by no means
commend it to your exact imitation."
HICKORY DALE, 1000 FT. ABOVE THE SEA
January 1st, 1865
DEAR JOHN:
We are pretty well, but are fast growing weary
of the many changes which now seem to be of daily occurrence. We now live in
a room made in the upper part of the barn next the orchard. We reach it by
an outside stair. It is hard carrying up the wood and water. Once I slipt
and fell with an armful of burr oak firewood and sprained my weeping sinew.
The cattle live in the house now - the cows in the cellar, the horses on the
first floor, and the sheep upstairs. Nan will not go past the cellar door,
but we do the best we can.
The apple trees are dug up and planted upon the
cold rocky summit of the observatory where I am sure they will not grow
well. The cattle do not stand the severe weather well this winter. They
stand drawn together like a dog licking a pot.
Aunt Sally is married, and Lowdy Grahm has the
whooping cough. Write soon or sooner. From your Sis
MARY
P.S. Carrie Muir has enlisted and David is very
angry. There, Mary, you
should put some grit and bone of that kind in your letters. I scribble that
nonsense only to show you that these small matters which occur in the
neighborhood and which you do not think worthy of note are still of interest
to us when so far from home...
Affectionately
JOHN
To his friend Emily Pelton he writes under date
of May 23, 1865: We
live in a retired and romantic hollow. . . . Our social advantages are of
course, few and, for my part, I do not seek to extend my acquaintance, but
work and study and dream in this retirement... Our tall, tall forest trees
are now all alive, and the ocean of mingled blossoms and leaves waves and
curls and rises in rounded swells farther and farther away, like the thick
smoke from a factory chimney. Freshness and beauty are everywhere; flowers
are born every hour; living sunlight is poured over all, and every thing and
creature is glad. Our world is indeed a beautiful one, and I was thinking,
on going to church last Sabbath, that I would hardly accept of a free ticket
to the moon or to Venus, or any other world, for fear it might not be so
good and so fraught with the glory of the Creator as our own. Those
miserable hymns, such as
"This world is all a fleeting show
For man's delusion given,"
do not at all correspond with my likings, and I
am sure they do not with yours.
The following letter, addressed to three of his
sisters, is of interest because it exhibits his love of fun from another
angle. The proposed sale of the Hickory Hill farm was not consummated at
this time. The Fountain Lake farm, however, to which he had become so deeply
attached, was sold about this time by his brother-in-law, David Galloway.
TROUT'S HOLLOW, C. W.
December 24, 1865
DEAR SISTERS MARY, ANNA, AND
JOANNA: I feel that I
owe you a long apology for not replying to your long good letters. I have
been exceedingly busy, but this is not a sufficient excuse. My bed sets me
upon my feet at five, and I go to bed at eleven, and have to do at least two
days' work every day, sometimes three. I sometimes almost forget where I am,
what I am doing, or what my name is. I often think of you and wish with all
my might that I could see and chat with you. Were it not that I have no time
to think, I would grow homesick and die in a day or two. My picture of home
is in my room, and when I see it now I feel sorry at the thought of its
being sold. Fountain Lake, Oak Grove, Little Valley, Hickory Hill, etc.,
with all of their long list of associations, pleasant and otherwise, will
soon have passed away and been forgotten.
I was glad to hear that Dan was visiting so long
with you. I suppose that he told you many a surprising and funny tale of
Canada. I think that he can make and enjoy a joke very well indeed. I had a
letter from him, and he says that he has plenty of money, clothes, and hope
for the future. I wish
you were here. You would find queer things. We have queer trees, queer
flowers, queer streams, queer weather, queer customs, and queer people with
queer names. One man is called Lake, another Jay, Eagle, Raven, Stirling,
Bird. Mr. Jay married Miss Raven a few weeks ago. One day at the table we
were speaking about names and Mr. Trout said that "Rose" was a fine name,
and I said that Muir was better than Trout, or Jay, or Rose, or Eagle,
because that though a Jay or Eagle was a fine bird, and a Trout a good fish,
and Rose a fine flower, a Scottish Muir or Moor had fine birds, and fine
fishes in its streams, and fine wild roses together with almost every .other
excellence, but above all "the bonnie bloomin' heather." We may well be
proud of our name.
Another story. One Sunday I returned from meeting before the rest and was in
the house alone reading one of the "Messengers" mother sent, when a little
bird flew into the house and the cat caught it. I chased the cat out of the
house, and through the house, till I caught her, to save the bird's life,
but she would not let it go, and I choked her and choked her to make her let
it go until I choked her to death, though I did not mean to, and they both
lay dead upon the floor. I waited to see if she would not receive back one
of her nine lives, but to my grief I found that I had taken them all, so I
buried her beside some cucumber vines in the garden. When the rest came home
I told what had occurred, and Chancy Jay, who is as full of wit and jokes as
the pond was of cold water one night, said, "Now John is always scolding us
about killing spiders and flies but when we are away he chokes the cats,"
and they kept saying "poor kitty," "poor puss," for weeks afterwards to make
me laugh. I will write
you all a long letter some day.
[JOHN MUIR]
The more serious side of his nature and the
aspirations he cherished at this time come to expression in a letter which
marks the beginning of a long and remarkable correspondence with Mrs. Jeanne
C. Carr, whose acquaintance with John Muir, as stated in an earlier chapter,
began when he exhibited his wooden clocks at the Wisconsin State Fair in
1860. How much her friendship was to mean to the budding naturalist appears
clearly even in the earliest of his letters to her.
From the time of Chancellor John Hiram Lathrop's
resignation in July, 1859, to the choice of Paul A. Chadbourne as head of
the University of Wisconsin eight years later, Professor John W. Sterling
was virtually president. When John Muir failed to return to the University
in the autumn of 1864 the faculty, knowing how eager he was to continue his
studies, invited him to return as a free student and Professor Sterling was
instructed to communicate this decision to him. Whether this invitation was
for the autumn of 1864 or 1865 is not entirely clear. Unfortunately the
letter never reached him and the opportunity could not be improved. This is
the letter of which he writes that he "waited and wearied for it a long
time." TROUT'S MILLS,
NEAR MEAFORD, [C. W.]
September 13th, [1865]
DEAR MRS. CARR: Your
precious letter with its burden of cheer and good wishes has come to our
hollow, and has done for me that work of sympathy and encouragement which I
know you kindly wished it to do. It came at a time when much needed, for I
am subject to lonesomeness at times. Accept, then, my heartfelt gratitude -
would that I could make a better return.
I am sorry over the loss of Professor Sterling's
letter, for I waited and wearied for it a long time. I have been keeping up
an irregular course of study since leaving Madison, but with no great
success. I do not believe that study, especially of the Natural Sciences, is
incompatible with ordinary attention to business; still, I seem to be able
to do but one thing at a time. Since undertaking, a month or two ago, to
invent new machinery for our mill, my mind seems to so bury itself in the
work that I am fit for but little else; and then a lifetime is so little a
time that we die ere we get ready to live.
I would like to go to college, but then I have
to say to myself, "You will die ere you can do anything else." I should like
to invent useful machinery, but it comes, "You do not wish to spend your
lifetime among machines and you will die ere you can do anything else." I
should like to study medicine that I might do my part in lessening human
misery, but again it comes, "You will die ere you are ready to be able to do
so." How intensely I desire to be a Humboldt! but again the chilling answer
is reiterated. Could we but live a million of years, then how delightful to
spend in perfect contentment so many thousand years in quiet study in
college, so many amid the grateful din of machines, so many among human
pain, so many thousands in the sweet study of Nature among the dingles and
dells of Scotland, and all the other less important parts of our world! Then
perhaps might we, with at least a show of reason "shuffle off this mortal
coil" and look back upon our star with something of satisfaction.
I should be ashamed - if shame might be in the
other world - if any of the powers, virtues, essences, etc., should ask me
for common knowledge concerning our world which I could not bestow. But away
with this aged structure and we are back to our handful of hasty years half
gone, all of course for the best did we but know all of the Creator's plan
concerning us. In our higher state of existence we shall have time and
intellect for study. Eternity, with perhaps the whole unlimited creation of
God as our field, should satisfy us, and make us patient and trustful, while
we pray with the Psalmist, "So teach us to number our days that we may apply
our hearts unto wisdom."
I was struck with your remarks about our real
home as being a thing of stillness and peace. How little does the outer and
noisy world in general know of that "real home "and real inner life! Happy
indeed they who have a friend to whom they can unmask the workings of their
real life, sure of sympathy and forbearance!
I sent for the book which you recommend. I have
just been reading a short sketch of the life of the mother of Lamartine.
These are beautiful things you say about the humble life of our Saviour and
about the trees gathering in the sunshine.
What you say respecting the
littleness of the number who are called to "the pure and deep communion of
the beautiful, all-loving Nature," is particularly true of the hard-working,
hard- drinking, stolid Canadians. In vain is the glorious chart of God in
Nature spread out for them. So many acres chopped is their motto, so they
grub away amid the smoke of magnificent forest trees, black as demons and
material as the soil they move upon. I often think of the Doctor's lecture
upon the condition of the different races of men as controlled by physical
agencies. Canada, though abounding in the elements of wealth, is too
difficult to subdue to permit the first few generations to arrive at any
'great intellectual development. In my long rambles last summer I did not
find a single person who knew anything of botany and but a few who knew the
meaning of the word; and wherein lay the charm that could conduct a man, who
might as well be gathering mammon, so many miles through these fastnesses to
suffer hunger and exhaustion, was with them never to be discovered. Do not
these answer well to the person described by the poet in these lines:
"A primrose by the river's brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And nothing more." I
thank Dr. Carr for his kind remembrance of me, but still more for the good
patience he had with so inapt a scholar. We remember in a peculiar way those
who first give us the story of Redeeming Love from the great book of
revelation, and I shall not forget the Doctor, who first laid before me the
great book of Nature, and though I have taken so little from his hand, he
has at least shown me where those mines of priceless knowledge lie and how
to reach them. 0 how frequently, Mrs. Carr, when lonely and wearied, have I
wished that like some hungry worm I could creep into that delightful kernel
of your house - your library -with its portraits of scientific men, and so
bountiful a store of their sheaves amid the blossom and verdure of your
little kingdom of plants, luxuriant and happy as though holding their leaves
to the open sky of the most flower- loving zone in the world!
That "sweet day" did, as you wished, reach our
hollow, and another is with us now. The sky has the haze of autumn and,
excepting the aspen, not a tree has motion. Upon our enclosing wall of
verdure new tints appear. The gorgeous dyes of autumn are too plainly seen,
and the forest seems to have found out that again its leaf must fade. Our
stream, too, has a less cheerful sound and as it bears its foam- bells
pensively away from the shallow rapids in the rocks it seems to feel that
summer is past. You
propose, Mrs. Carr, an exchange of thoughts for which I thank you very
sincerely. This will be a means of pleasure and improvement which I could
not have hoped ever to have been possessed of, but then here is the
difficulty: I feel that I am altogether incapable of properly conducting a
correspondence with one so much above me. We are, indeed, as you say,
students in the same life school, but in very different classes. I am but an
alpha novice in those sciences which you have studied and loved so long. If,
however, you are willing in this to adopt the plan that our Saviour
endeavored to beat into the stingy Israelites, viz, to "give, hoping for
nothing again," all will be well, and as long as your letters resemble this
one before me, which you have just written, in genus, order, cohort, class,
province, or kingdom, be assured that by way of reply you shall at least
receive an honest "Thank you."
Tell Allie that Mr. Muir thanks him for his
pretty flowers and would like to see him, also that I have a story for him
which I shall tell some other time. Please remember me to my friends, and
now, hoping to receive a letter from you at least semi-occasionally, I
remain, Yours with
gratitude JOHN MUIR
Brought up in the strictest tenets of
traditional orthodoxy, John Muir's scientific studies gradually forced him
to reconstruct the factual basis of his religious beliefs. Darwin's "Origin
of Species" had appeared in 1859, and a fierce conflict was raging between
champions of the theory of special creation and what now came to be known as
the theory of organic evolution. Even at the university he had become aware
of the chasm that was opening between the old biblical literalism and the
more comprehensive interpretations of religion. A certain prominent
clergyman of Madison, who was an advocate of a neighboring sectarian
college, had often assailed what he was pleased to call the atheistic views
of certain members of the faculty. 'Without relaxing his hold on the
essentials of his Protestant faith, John Muir's sympathies were unmistakably
enlisted on the side of liberalism. He promptly and quite naturally adopted
the view that the Bible is not authoritative in the realm of natural
science, but that in its expectations of the facts and phenomena of the
universe it exhibits the same gradual unfolding of human knowledge which has
marked man's progress in other spheres of thought.
It is not easy to trace the steps by which he
broke away from the narrow Biblicism of his training, but he would from this
period onward have subscribed at any time to the statement of Louis Agassiz
that "a physical fact is as sacred as a moral principle." Lyell, who since
1830 had prepared the way for Darwin by showing that the world is very old
and the outcome of a long development, excited Muir's enthusiastic interest.
Later he became a warm friend of J. D. Hooker and Asa Gray, two of Darwin's
earliest supporters.
Nathaniel S. Shaler, who passed through the same period of readjustment as
Muir, confessed' that his first contact with natural science in his youth
and early manhood had the not uncommon effect of leading him far away from
Christianity and that in later years a further insight into the truths of
nature had gradually forced him back again to the ground from which he had
departed. It is interesting to find that Muir, probably in spite of his
upbringing, had no such experience. He saw that the alleged antagonism
between natural science and the Bible was due to the accumulated lumber of
past generations of faulty Bible teaching. By promptly discarding the
crudities of this teaching and adopting a more rational historical
interpretation of the Bible he saved his faith both in religion and in
science. In a letter
from "The hollow," written to Mrs. Carr toward the end of January, 1866, we
get a glimpse of his mental workings. To the statement that she was writing
her letter in the delicious quiet of a Sabbath evening in the country, "with
cow bells tinkling instead of steeple chimes, the drone and chirp of myriad
insects for choral service, depending for a sermon upon the purple bluffs
and flowing river," he responds as follows:
I was interested with the description you gave
of your sermon. You speak of such services like one who appreciates and
relishes them. But although the page of Nature is so replete with divine
truth it is silent concerning the fall of man and the wonders of Redeeming
Love. Might she not have been made to speak as clearly and eloquently of
these things as she now does of the character and attributes of God? It may
be a bad symptom, but I will confess that I take more intense delight from
reading the power and goodness of God from "the things which are made" than
from the Bible. The two books harmonize beautifully, and contain enough of
divine truth for the study of all eternity. It is so much easier for us to
employ our faculties upon these beautiful tangible forms than to exercise a
simple, humble, living faith such as you so well describe as enabling us to
reach out joyfully into the future to expect what is promised as a thing of
to-morrow. On another
occasion, in describing to a friend his discovery of Calypso borealis, he
wrote: I cannot
understand the nature of the curse, "Thorns and thistles shall it bring
forth to thee." Is our world indeed the worse for this thistly curse? Are
not all plants beautiful, or some way useful? Would not the world suffer by
the banishment of a single weed? The curse must be within ourselves.
He was at this time in the full flush of his
inventive activity and working hard to complete the contract into which he
had entered with his employers.
I have been very busy of late making practical
machinery [he writes]. I like my work exceeding well, but would prefer
inventions which would require some artistic as well as mechanical skill. I
invented and put in operation a few days ago an attachment for a self-acting
lathe which has increased its capacity at least one third. We are now using
it to turn broom handles, and as these useful articles may now be made
cheaper, and as cleanliness is one of the cardinal virtues, I congratulate
myself on having done something, like a true philanthropist, for the real
good of mankind in general. What say you? I have also invented a machine for
making rake teeth, and another for boring for them, and driving them, and
still another for making the bows, still another used in making the handles,
still another for bending them - so that rakes may now be made nearly as
fast again. Farmers will be able to produce grain at a lower rate, and the
poor to get more bread to eat. Here is more philanthropy, is it not? I
sometimes feel as though I was losing time but I am at least receiving my
first lessons in practical mechanics and as one of the firm here is a
millwright and as I am permitted to make as many machines as I please and to
remodel those now in use, the school is a pretty good one.
The thirty thousand broom handles were all
turned and stored in every available place about the factory for final
seasoning when one stormy night about the first of March, 1866, the building
took fire. There was no means of fire control and soon the sawmill and
factory with all their laboriously manufactured contents were reduced to a
pile of ashes. Since there was no insurance, the owners having lost
practically everything, John Muir made as equitable a settlement as
possible, taking notes bearing neither interest nor date of payment. He
always took pride in the thought that his employers justified his
confidence, for every cent was ultimately paid. Leaving, some of his books
to his Sunday School class of admiring boys, and some of his textbooks on
botany to friends whom he had interested in this study, he turned his face
toward the States. The motives which influenced him to go to Indianapolis
and what he found there are the subject of autobiographical notes which
follow in the next chapter.
How warm a place he had made for himself in that
Meaford circle of friends we learn from a sheaf of kindly letters that
followed him southward on his departure soon after the fire. "Was there ever
more freedom of speech, thought, and action felt on earth than in that
Hollow?" wrote one of the Trout sisters. "We were all equal; every one did
as he chose. Ah me! I hope that the happy days will return; that we may be
there again, and that you might be one of our number for at least a short
time. The circle would be incomplete without you." "John," wrote another,
"you don't know how we missed the little star you used to have in the window
for us when we would be coming home after night, and the cheerful fire. And
not least, we missed the pleasant welcome you had for us."
But the disaster which led John to resume his
wanderings also scattered the members of the Meaford circle far and wide
over Canada and the United States. In more than the literal sense he had put
a star in the window for many of them, and for several decades grateful
letters tell of their progress in the new interests which he had brought
into their lives. One of the last to survive was William H. Trout, and with
a paragraph from the last letter that Muir wrote to him, in 1912, we
conclude the account of his Canadian sojourn:
I am always glad to hear from you. Friends get
closer and dearer the farther they travel on life's journey. It is fine to
see how youthful your heart remains, and wide and far-reaching your
sympathy, with everybody and everything. Such people never grow old. I only
regret your being held so long in mechanical bread-winning harness, instead
of making enough by middle age and spending the better half of life in
studying God's works as I wanted you to do long ago. The marvel is that in
the din and rattle of mills you have done so wondrous well. By all means
keep on your travels, since you know so well how to reap their benefits. I
shall hope to see you when next you come West. And don't wait until the
canal year. Delays are more and more dangerous as sundown draws nigh. |
